Another science teacher writes…
nick cowen, 4 July 2007
As a comment response to Wellington Grey’s plea to AQA to save Physics as a body of knowledge rather than a series of opinions developed by a mass media consensus, Dr Debbie Barnett wrote:
I am also a Science teacher, and although not a Physicist, I share your despair at the diluting of Science in the vain attempt to make it accessible to the masses! I teach Chemistry and Biology and feel that the objectivity of Science and been replaced by a need for pupils to use language in a way that requires an eloquence not always seen in even the best Scientists. AQA have replaced proper Science with newspaper Science. Pupils are switching off, Science teachers are looking for ways out of teaching or jobs in private schools so they can teach the IGCSE.
Like you, I came into teaching because I love my subject, but the Science has gone to be replaced by a hazy approximation to proper Science in order to appease a government think tank that is trying to make it appeal to the masses. Not everyone loves Science, but these new courses will switch off our brightest and best young Scientists of the future. We will have to look abroad or to the private schools for future Scientists. One size fits all does not work and will not do any favours to state school children trying to get on University courses in the academic Science subjects. I, for one, will be tutoring my own children in the traditional art of Science if they show any desire to pursue Science further than secondary school!
We are interested to hear from others with direct experience of the changes in the school curriculum.
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David Perks, one of the authors of our report, The Corruption of the Curriculum, has arranged a meeting in for fellow Physics teachers to discuss the crisis.
From Frank Chalk:
If you live in London and are involved in the teaching of what was once Science, then you might be interested in a meeting on Thursday 5th July at 7 pm in the Plumbers Arms, 14 Lower Belgrave St. near Victoria Tube station. It’s purpose is to try and come up with some plans to fight the dumbing down of the subject, which has pretty much turned it from a difficult, rigorous fact based subject requiring mathematical skills into a politicised and knowledge-free debate on nuclear powered, global warming Ozone chemicals innit.
There is nothing wrong with Science and those with a passion for it will get it. Anna’s comment “My son, who is good at science, had been looking forward to GCSE but was terribly disappointed after a few weeks by the fact that he was hardly learning anything.” led me to wonder whether her son, the teacher or the subject was the problem for a lack of learning. I once taught the detailed structure of an egg, where it came from and what it develops into. Now I teach bland scrambled eggs for all and add the extra to make it interesting. My fear is not the messing from above but the increasing minority of disaffected and destructive youths in front of me. They ruin lessons in favour of their own evangelism of the Bacchinalian world they live in. Tertullian writes that that which is not permissible to say or do should not be permissible to see or hear. This media world destroys their childhood and their education seems meaningless to them. My performance for the middle ground of pupils is for ever changing. New generations of teachers out there have these skills too, but it is still a war of hearts and minds that still needs the moral high ground as its base. As a supply teacher I find that it is the support network that flounders and this is where stressladen staff need help to remove the work load and keep on top of the problems. No wonder that stark room was called the “sin bin”, but hardly suprising its contents are part of a new social revolution that needs to be heard.
More evidence of our leaders’ continuing effort to reduce everybody to equality, even if it means an equality of ignorance. This is vicious far-left stuff, but because it gained strangle hold on education some forty years ago, Labour has been allowed to take up ever more extreme positions on the subject without significant challenge.
Another example of the blurring and dilution of reality, – standard practice of Noo Layba and its acolites. Hard scince is just that, – hard. And it takes application and time to learn, both of which are in short supply in this ‘quick, fix it!’ world.
A young lady, wishing to be a doctor tells me that her Biology exam was in large part based on environmental issues. How exactly did the dimwits running this country come to the conclusion that this was a useful start for our medical people? But what really worries me is that, glaringly obvious those these stupidities are, we cannot get them changed. This powerlessness is going to lead to confrontation unless a political hero emerges soon.
I am so pleased to see you taking up the issue of the 21st Science GCSE curriculum. My son, who is good at science, had been looking forward to GCSE but was terribly disappointed after a few weeks by the fact that he was hardly learning anything.
I think that an important point is that the 3 separate sciences (often described as being the solution for pupils who are interested in science) are very little better than the combined double science in terms of the small amount of science they contain.
A further concern is that the OCR syllabus has very clear political biases (for instance, it promotes the idea that nuclear power is the way forward – which may be true, but is not the proper content of a science GCSE).